So things really got ridiculous on the first full day of occupation. Thanks in large part to the continual live blogging by Charlie of NYULocal (really great job by this guy despite the fact that the idiots he was covering were becoming increasingly antagonistic) the inanity from inside the occupation was getting wide coverage. Over the course of the day this was covered by CNN, The New York Times (who even sent in a reporter) and CBS who had a truck parked outside all day.
I didn’t catch wind of it till I saw the headline on Gothamist with a link to Charlie’s blog and was quickly entranced. In the light of day it was revealed that a large number of the 50ish students who were attempting to take back NYU DIDN’T ACTUALLY GO TO NYU they were a collection of wannabe freedom fighters with delusions of grandeur from schools ranging from New School to Muhlenberg College in Jersey (figures Jersey would play a hand in this).
They spent most the morning trying to negotiate with administration for two things. 1) Access to the balcony on the third floor so that they could hold their “press conference” and address their supporters gathered outside. By this point there was a decent number of people on the street but they weren’t necessarily supporters. And 2) food.
NYU refused to budge on the first demand which caused some petulant foot stomping by the occupiers who had to push back their noon press conference as a result. Because let’s face it if they can’t speak to the people on the street their ability to hold those people’s interest would dissipate fast so they did what any good revolutionary would do: they broke the lock on the balcony door. Now I will give them credit, Che would not have batted an eye at breaking the lock to connect with the masses poised for revolution but the dipshits in Kimmel had released a no violence no property damage manifesto when they first occupied Kimmel.
I’m sorry; I just have to stop for a second. Its killing me to say occupied. They pile a bunch of tables and chairs up in front of a door. It in no way impeded entrance or exit. So the only thing stopping them from getting their self righteous hipster asses thrown out was the indulgence of (in my liberal left leaning mind) an administration that was too soft with them from the get go. So I am not gonna call it an occupation anymore they made a mess. That’s it.
So anyway TBNYU made a consensus decision, because in the true, completely disconnected to the exigencies of reality fashion TBNYU is a democratic organization that claims to make all decisions on a consensus basis requiring a unanimous vote (because that’s a totally sustainable system in even the most theoretical debates much less in an “occupation” requiring fast and decisive responses to changing circumstances) and that decision was to alter their manifesto to allow property damage and to break the lock with the tools they oh so conveniently brought with them.
So now they had balcony access. But apparently they didn’t have food. These nothing if not practical revolutionaries, these scions of the 60s and disciples of Che (by disciples I mean list Motorcycle Diaries as one of their favorite movies on Facebook) brought tools to break doors, kitty litter and buckets to use for toilets and Macbooks to update their Facebook status BUT NOT ENOUGH FOOD TO LAST THEM TWELVE HOURS! Now I know that my eating habits aren’t normal and that most people don’t generally eat only once a day but come on. You are occupying a building, couldn’t you have either foreseen the need to bring enough sandwiches for a day or two or else just sucked it up and gone without for a while. I mean Bobby Sands went 65 days without food in support of his beliefs. Sure he actually had a cause worth fighting for and the hunger strike killed him but you could have at least gone a full day without whining about hunger pains. What is Temple the Dog not hipster approved enough for Hunger Strike to be in your IPod?
So they tried negotiating for food. And this is about the point where I started following this whole disaster and its really what hooked me on this pathetic saga. NYU agreed to bring them food (they were also letting them leave the barricade to go to the bathroom whenever they wanted which just makes their “occupation” look that much sadder and NYU that much more like the tolerant parent letting their children tantrum till they tire out)
So NYU goes to bring them food and the freedom fighters refuse it BECAUSE IT ISNT VEGAN! And then double refuse it cause it’s from NYU’s contracted food provider who they claim utilizes prison labor. So beggars can be choosers. God I hate vegans. And hipsters but especially the unholy union of the two.
But ultimately the bastards get fed, though they continue to bitch incessantly and demand that their friends be allowed to bring them food instead. I would’ve starved them out or released a skunk in there, or just carpet bombed the whole damn place, but hey, that’s me.
While all this was going on, two NYU girls from the group (and online blog) Feminist Ninjas showed up and doffed their tops to show solidarity with the freedom fighters inside fighting for their vegan lunches. I guess I can see the connection between full disclosure and going topless but it really just seemed like another group trying to get in on the fame, specially when you look at the pics of them trying to look all arty and vintage counter culture with their cigs. (Yes yes, while this is a family blog I would never deprive the Pones from a justifiable reason to look at tits (albeit NYU tits). Photos are HERE. NSFW.)
When I showed up a little before 5pm (the rescheduled time for their press conference) the boobs were gone but the food thing was apparently still pissing them off cause they had tied a rope to a bucket and were throwing it off the balcony and yelling at people to put food in it for them. Now ignoring the fact that they brought rope and buckets to get food instead of just bringing in enough food in the first place, and the fact that they had been offered food by NYU there was still the fact that clearly NYU security and NYPD were stationed all around where that bucket was going to end up so unless their friends wanted to bum rush the police to give them a veggie cheese burrito they weren’t getting any food. Still they screamed and yelled in whiney horror when the bucket finally made it to ground level and the police promptly cut the rope. Sigh.
The scene outside at this point was just as entertaining as the one being live blogged inside. Cause of the 5pm conference and the excellent live coverage there was a decent number of people congregated outside, a couple hundred I’d say. They were really divided onto either side of the street where the police had set up crowd fences. The fenced section on the Kimmel side of the street was for supporters. I think it was hard to tell as even at this point the sprawl of pet causes was running rampant.
Like this lady protesting the The NY Post for being racist. Cause that has anything to do with this. It’s like Walter trying to connect everything to ‘Nam “well it’s not a literal connection Dude”.
Then there was this sign. Two weeks on I still have no fucking clue what this means. “Israelis White”? And was it really necessary to label the Star of David? Would anyone misunderstand THAT part of the sign? And if you were gonna label it was it really necessary to shorten it to Dave?
But it was like that across the street to where I was standing. In the 45 minutes I hung out watching the press conference I was handed a half dozen different fliers ranging from TBNYU’s list of demands, to “Morality without God” to a Communist workers meeting, a sign that said “Sex Fuckston” which is an inversion of “Fuck (School President) Sexton” but which makes for a confusing message, to a number of handouts from counter protestors. Yep there was a counter protest movement; a pretty strong one really as the overwhelming attitude from the student body seemed to be “what a bunch of dipshits”. Of course it wouldn’t be NYU if such sentiments weren’t expressed in equally obnoxious hipster ways.
In this case that meant rallying around Quesadillas and holding up signs demanding that the occupiers “Free our Quesadillas”. So great we can’t even manage to do reactionary neo-McCarthyism right. We have to settle for ironic counterpoint. Cept of course for this guy who was direct, to the point and persistent. Apparently he had been out there holding that sign for hours.
Mixed in with all this were a large number of bemused folk like myself watching in awe of the general stupidity and walking amongst us all like refugees from a Phish parking lot were people vending. Yes vending. I guess they showed up to provide food for the patriots and when they couldn’t get it in the bucket they started handing it out.
This girl was giving way free vegan wraps,
While this dude was handing out Junior Mints: The official candy of the Revolution.
There was also one girl trying to sell vegan cupcakes but finding a hard market when just as shitty but more free vegan offerings were available.
Then the press conference started. For me, knowing only some of what I know now, it really crystallized by scorn. It was really just a bunch of the presumable ringleaders, oops I’m sorry it’s an autonomous collective that makes all decisions by consensus so there aren’t leaders so we will just call them the most equal of the equals, took turns on a megaphone.
Their lack of organization at what I would have thought a critical point was embarrassing. They seemed content to pass around the megaphone, anyone who wanted it getting a couple minutes to spew random disconnected phrases they’d learned reading the Communist Manifesto cliff notes.
They would interrupt these pathetically silly rants to lead chants like “What does democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like” (uhh…no.) or other similarly inventive phrases. And I think that was the part that killed me the most cause the kids starting the chants, notably the girl in the white hoodie and the dark haired kid in the gray sweatshirt (these two drove me crazy) were so clearly overjoyed with themselves for getting such chants started that it became brutally, painfully clear that their idealism and belief in what they were protesting for, however misplaced or poorly acted upon, took a complete backseat to a look at me, aren’t I awesome, isn’t this awesome, self centered, self involved ego trip. If you told them you’d give in to their demands for full financial disclosure and student unions if they’d turn in their Keffiyehs, skinny jeans and chunky glasses they’d refuse full of indignant rage.
Really the only thing they actually managed to convey to the crowd was that they needed their support at 1am (Kimmel’s scheduled closing time) because if they stayed past that they’d been told they would be deep shit.
I had had enough freezing my ass off in the name of self-indulgent revolution so I went back to classes and PILC auctions etc but I gather I didn’t miss a whole lot in the next couple hours. The real highlights were the Zapatistas caving on their hunger strike and accepting non vegan and presumably prison prepared foodstuffs from NYU. I guess the vegans just didn’t eat it but still, that had to be just another sign of the weakness of their convictions. No wonder NYU was stonewalling them and refusing to meet with their “negotiators” to discuss their lists of demands till they vacated the premises.
Of course instead of going that route TBNYU managed to coordinate through such modern revolutionary means as Twitter, Facebook and cell phones an invasion of new blood into the mess. Around 930pm about 40 additional students bum rushed the security guards on the third floor and forced their way into the “occupied zone”. How on earth NYU let them get in the building much less the third floor mystifies me but they got in the “zone” by pushing past the guard who was guarding one of the side entrances. NYU had sealed the door by putting in those little rubber stoppers on the bottom to keep it shut. That just reemphasizes my earlier point about the patheticism of the barricade. NYU had to seal entrances FOR the “occupiers”.
Now to their credit it sounds like this big increase in occupiers is what saved them from NYU just running them all out of there at 1am, cause up till that point the revolutionaries’ numbers had dwindled both because of the threats of repercussions and because some students left to go to class. I’ve already said it a couple dozen times but seriously? Commit to the revolution or don’t but I just don’t see Lenin taking a break from storming the Winter Palace to attend his feminism in literature class.
So when 1am came around NYU decided to let them stay overnight which was pretty weak on their part in my opinion. Understandably they were desperately trying to avoid doing anything that would increase the already terrible and wide spread publicity this whole thing was generating but c’mon the sooner its over the sooner the cameras go away.
Meanwhile outside things got a little harrier as large numbers of socialists and anarchists the two groups guaranteed to show up at any vaguely leftist event were out in force and at some point they got into it with the sizable NYPD presence and a number of people got pepper sprayed. On the plus side, they deserved it for their parasitic approach to other people’s protests. On the down side, none of the mopes pepper sprayed were the ones responsible for all this nonsense.
So on we go to day three…
(The beautiful top shot and all inside shots are stolen from NYULocal.com, the rest of the outside shots are mine.)
Seriously? The star of Dave? Man.
Dave, I appreciate the topless shots, really I do. But maybe those girls should look into some red meat because all those photos really do is make me wish I had four hands…so I could give those titties four thumbs DOWN!!!
The milk’s gone bad bitches!!!
Oh and while I’m here, I’d like to add another demand:
#14 – Full disclosure of the secret phone number at Milk & Honey.